The Reader
by Ninmub
Summary: The Ke-Han Emperor requests assistance from Volstov in quelling an uprising. Royston writes letters. Hal reads them. Indulgently sappy letterfic, basically.


**Title:** The Reader

**Pairings:** Hal/Royston, Adamo/Laure, teeny tiny smatterings of onesided Toverre - Hal

**Warnings:** Eh, vaguely implied goings-on, but it's mostly just Laure swearing a lot.

**Spoilers:** Through _Steelhands,_ so beware.

**Notes:** Er, so, this fic was begun...before Steelhands had even come out, actually, and as such has grown considerably from its origins in the past week. Erm. It is ENTIRELY UNEDITED, also there is angst? A lot of it? It is predominantly ridiculously sappy and indulgent Hal/Royston letterfic because ARGH FEELS, but there is also quite a bit of Adamo/Laure that you can easily take as one-sided if you want to. Er, and Toverre is probably still friendcrushing mildly on Hal, but not in any significant way.

Also, the Fluffy Duckling Inn is stolen from Tangled, of course. The story that Royston tells Hal is loosely based on Faithful John, a lovely and not too well-known fairytale, and the reference that Hal makes to Philomela getting hungry after awkward dragon-slaying encounter is a nod to the story of Sigfried, who gained the ability to speak to birds after tasting the blood of the dragon Fafnir.

_Also_ also, the only reason I actually finished this up is because of the lovely fandom revival happening at the Thremedon comm on LJ, so go and check that out if you haven't already!

**Summary:** The Ke-Han Emperor requests assistance from Volstov in quelling an uprising. Royston writes letters. Hal reads them.

**The Reader**

My darling –

So far I have seen one hundred and eighty-seven sheep – one eighty-eight if you count our Fearless Leader, who looks just like one. I always knew there was a good reason for not trusting the Ke-Han – no sensible people should keep this many damn sheep. I relay this scintillating statistic primarily to impress upon you the sheer monotony of our little excursion thus far – and really, I cannot call it anything else, seeing as we have seen virtually no disturbances in well over a fortnight. This is, in itself, nothing I ought complain about, but really, the tedium is unbearable.

And there I had meant to make this letter cheerful and amusing. You will forgive me, won't you? I am only bad-tempered because of the mosquitoes, which are, quite literally, the biggest threat we have encountered thus far. They are honestly the size of Thremedon pigeons, and twice as malicious. Do you remember that particularly obnoxious one that used to haunt the fountain outside the 'Versity? The one with the evil little red eyes that tried to take the artificial fruit off that poor unsuspecting woman's hat? It would be no match for these mosquitoes. I had a veritable duel to the death with one the other night, when I discovered it hiding stealthy as an assassin in the flaps of my tent just after I had managed to clear away all its comrades. Armed only with the sole of my boot, I launched myself upon my unsuspecting foe, only to find him fled, and myself, carried onward by the force of my bold attack, rather tangled up in guy ropes and canvas. After straightening things out, I settled down to sleep again, only to find that the villain had returned, this time accompanied by two more of his dastardly band! This shocking twist in the narrative took me wholly unawares. I was so desperate for some sleep that I honestly considered trying to blow them up midflight – I suppose that setting half the camp on fire would, at the very least, have been mildly entertaining.

That very silly paragraph, you understand, was an attempt more to convince myself that I still have some sense of imagination than it was to entertain you, for I know that you are quite past being concerned with daring last-ditch battles against fiendish blood-sucking insects and other such frivolities, and would never waste my very serious, very responsible time composing fairytales for you. Speaking of which, where had we gotten in the Adventures of Stethos the Slightly Impetuous? Had he stormed the Pancake Castle yet? I've forgotten whether he found the Frying Pan of Truth in a ditch outside the Fluffy Duckling Inn, or whether he was still trying to con it off the mysterious travelling fortune-teller? These are the concerns that preoccupy my addled old mind. I'm afraid these paragraphs are getting sillier and sillier, but I am so terribly bored out here that there really isn't very much else for me to think about – except you, of course, and that doesn't help at all.

I am afraid I must close here, as we are to be on the march soon, and I don't know that I shall get a free moment to write again before I have a chance to send this off. Do please take care of yourself. If my commanding you is not sufficient, I will beg, and if my begging falls on deaf (or overworked, as is usually your case, I fear) ears, I shall just have to charge you with the following as a sacred task. Eat regularly, think long and hard on the next instalments of our fairy tales, and above all, sleep. If you break this most sacred taboo, terrible calamities will occur – specifically, I shall go mad with worry for you. I shall write again just as soon as I can, if I manage not to be eaten by sheep (or mosquitoes). Until then, I send with my words all my silly besotted adoration, as well as all my nagging; I pray that you take to heart the latter, and try not to roll your eyes too much at the former.

Ever yours,

Royston

* * *

O Dearest of Silly Fools –

Whose Perpetual Nagging is Treasured –

Although (I Fear) Not Much Heeded –

I may have set the tower the littlest bit on fire. No, no, relax! It was a very small fire and it only lasted five minutes at the most! None of the books got hurt, and you've only been set back one cushion. It was the ugly one with the orange flowers, anyway, so really, I've done you a service. It was a particularly small piece of toast, you understand, which was why I forgot I was making it, and a very interesting new roman (the _History of Ke-Han Elemental Magic_, the one you said Josette had recommended? I found a nice copy in the bookshop behind the theatre on the Amazement – it's a bit dog-eared, but it's got all the original maps in colour, and it's beautifully bound in blue leather and was enormously cheap. I'm four chapters in, and while I don't think it's been very good about sourcing a lot of its claims, it does have much more information than anything else I've found, and lots of nice tidbits of folklore, as well, which I'm enjoying a bit too much, I think. Also, all this was supposed to be in parentheses, wasn't it? Now I've had to go all the back up the page to remember what I was writing about. Oh, dear. I'll just close the brackets here, I think.) except now I have no idea how I was going to finish this sentence, and no doubt you've already thrown this awful, awful letter aside and have swooned in horror at your folly in taking up with someone who is clearly the most ignorant kind of uneducated lay-about who cannot even be bothered to keep track of his brackets and full stops, and here, I'll stop now.

But don't worry! Setbacks with the toast and my apparent loss of ability to punctuate aside, I haven't skipped a single meal all week, although dining alone is very disagreeable (but also, it seems, prone to ridding the world of orange-flowered cushions). I have taken to lunching with Toverre – you remember, Laure's boy? He's a little put out at being stuck at the 'Versity while all his friends have gone gallivanting off across the country on dragons, and so he's been spending quite a bit of time with me. He's very smart and sweet, and even more preoccupied with clothes than you are – he dragged me in and out of several hundred different tailors the other day and insisted on having me try on absolutely everything, it felt like. Eventually I managed to content him by buying the very cheapest hat I could find. He made me wear it all the way home. It had feathers. I felt like a duck. It was awful. I think I may have broken a little white dove's heart – she fell completely in love with all the feathers and kept trying to roost on my head. Toverre found it endlessly amusing.

Speaking of ducks, incidentally, I have told you to keep better notes! The mysterious fortune-teller is going to lure Stethos into the Duckling Inn so that she can perform a mystical rite on him while he sleeps – remember he had the funny birthmark, and she thinks he's the lost heir to the throne and wants to hold him hostage? He's finally going to meet up with Philomela while he's in the inn, though, and she's going to rescue him and lead him to the Pancake Castle, where her father works as the Evil Soup Pot's right-hand man. Philomela herself is half-unicorn, naturally. You have to think of the Three Impossible Tasks they have to complete to gain access to the Castle. I expect a full and detailed discussion of the symbolic properties of each one. No excuses.

Laure herself tells me that she's doing wonderfully, by the way – I had a very nice letter from her the other day. I'm sure Adamo has been writing filling your head with no end of tales about her valour and her cleverness and her fiery beauty, etc., etc., since a good nine-tenths of her letter was all about his endless stupidity and ludicrous ideas of strategy and general buffoonery (the other tenth was, and I quote quite faithfully, "hello, kid, haven't heard from you in a while, figured I'd write, how's your life?"), and it finished up by requesting me to tell you to tell Adamo that he was "an idiot of the first water who's perfectly capable of pulling his head out of his arse and answering a damn letter in between bouts of pining over Royston." She seems to think that the two of you are covering up a torrid affair of the most sordid kind, by the way, and that she and I are very likely going to be left consoling each other as we weep into our tea and fruitlessly bewail the faithlessness of man, or something. Do warn me before you elope with Adamo, won't you? I'll have to prepare the fainting couch and smelling salts. (Honestly, though – were we ever as ridiculous over each other as those two are? I'm sure we weren't. I'm sure we had a very staid and respectable courtship and never did anything ridiculous in boathouses.)

And now I've made myself miss you again. I shall end here, in case I start pining unattractively all over the page. Spilt loneliness is almost as tedious to clean off a letter as spilt ink, I've found. I promise faithfully to uphold all your requests, especially sleeping. Don't be too upset by all the sheep, please? I should hate to hear you've gone and blown yourself up because you joined a guerrilla cell devoted to ridding the world of the hideous rural threat of the Allied Sheep-Mosquito Warfront. I don't want to be a sheep widow, Royston, truly I don't – it lacks any ring of romanticism. I promise to sleep and eat and all the rest all the time, honestly I do, only don't make me into a sheep widow?

Ever your devoted cushion-destroyer,

Hal

* * *

Most esteemed sheep widow –

The dastardly Allied Sheep-Mosquito Warfront has struck again! I suspect they have intercepted our missives! We were set upon at dusk as we set up camp for the night next to some thrice-damned bog where the bastards had been hiding. Am red from head-to-toe with bites, and have sustained the tragic loss of an elbow in my second-best coat. Sheep are as bad as goats sometimes, it seems, and really will eat anything. It could have been far worse – the boy Adamo's got carrying his things about nearly lost a fingernail to a terrifying encounter with a rogue potbellied piglet. I fear the pigs have been won over with bribes of all the fresh foreigner they can eat and have joined the fight. I may not make it home. Think well of me, and bury me beside the remains of my beloved orange-flowered cushions I hear someone so thoughtlessly destroyed.

A Sheep-Mosquito war would really be infinitely more interesting than what's actually happening – which is that we are still trudging endlessly through the southern Ke-Han wastes, looking for these so-called seditionists. I suspect – indeed, I long for! – a set-up of the worst kind. These damned rebels are very remiss in their rebellioning, clearly. It's deeply inconsiderate. What's even worse is that I really cannot tell you very much more than that, just in case these very lazy and likely completely fictitious rebels do, in fact, intercept our letters. I can tell you that Adamo has sworn faithfully to write to Laure just as soon "as he feels like it", and that "some kids need to learn to keep their damn mouths shut." He told me to tell you to tell her that he's "probably the only Bastion-damned man in Thremedon who's never had even the faintest interest in Royston's nether regions, which are apparently made of gold given the interest shown them," and that her implying anything else is "defamation of character and also grounds for a damn good row."

Quite apart from being quite put out at being treated like a carrier pigeon with nothing better to do than pass messages along, I can't tell you how heartbroken I am by his apparent aversion to my charms. I'll win him over one day, just you wait – although given his grumpiness, I might not be glad when I do. He's taking this endless monotony even worse than I am. I heard him trying to sing the other day – some folksong he'd picked up in one of the villages hereabouts, he explained, something about a flame-hearted soldier girl with blood-red hair? Feel free to relay this information to young Laure as you see fit (by which I mean, at the earliest opportunity).

Speaking of folksongs and such – do you remember how we used to joke about the Ke-Han emperor, when he came to Thremedon after the war ended? Well, he was only a prince at the time of all the drama, I suppose. You found his story terribly romantic, I recall, and spent weeks after that perfectly besotted with all the Ke-Han histories and anthologies you could lay your hands on. I still regret not having introduced you to the prince himself, although naturally there really was no time at all for social visits. I wish I could at the very least have somehow found a way to let you steal a glimpse of him, for quite apart from being one of the bravest young men I have ever met, he truly was just as noble and handsome as a prince out of a storybook ought to be – though of course he could never be half so courageous or even a tenth so lovely as you, my darling, for you are the most perfect thing in the world.

The reason I recall all this now is that I collected a story the other day that I thought might entertain you. It was wholly new to me, but it did remind me more than a little than the story of the wrongly outcast prince and his loyal retainer. Did we agree, in the end, that I was more likely to be the retainer, and you the prince? You would have had it the other way around, I remember, but if either of us is going to be cast as the handsome and dashing young hero, it is you, while I am wholly content to be your humble slave. In any case, this is a very sad story, but one that I think you will like all the same. I know how you adore tragedy.

There was once, my friend Nestor assures me (and he speaks the language round here better than anyone I know), a young prince who loved stories and romans and paintings and music. He built a great pleasure house out of jade and crystal on the shores of a sky-blue lake high in the mountains where cherry trees blossomed all around, and here he kept a hundred thousand romans in bookshelves of ivory and gold. One day, while he was reading, he came across a picture in a book of the loveliest young girl he had ever imagined. She wore a dress the colour of morning, and had hair as dark as night. The young prince became obsessed with this picture, even going so far as to have a copy made of it so that he could carry it about in his breast as though it were an etching of his beloved, and begged his faithful manservant to tell him who the girl was.

His servant, a world-weary man who had seen many wars in his time, had long known that this would come to pass, and warned the prince that if he were told what he wished to know, he would soon fall into sorrow. The prince, however, persisted, and at last the servant told him that she was a renowned beauty who had been locked away in her youth due to the terrible curse laid upon her: for any man who loved her was doomed to die within a year. The prince was immediately beset by a frenzy of love, and prepared a great expedition. He set out for the tower where the cursed princess lived, and, having fought through all manner of terrible obstacles (including dragons, but also rampaging qu'lun and leering ghosts and ogres of the worst kind), freed her and married her.

The princess was rather pleased to be out of her tower, but also very frightened, for she knew the doom that had been laid upon all those who loved her, and didn't like the idea of this nice young man who had come to rescue her falling ill. The prince married her despite her protests, and was very good to her: but as the year went on, he began to grow pale and thin. He stopped eating; he couldn't even be persuaded to read the books that he had once loved so much. In the ninth month of his marriage, he began to sleep all morning; in the tenth, he stopped getting out of bed entirely; and by the time the eleventh month was drawing to a close, he could no longer speak, only lay tossing and turning in pain, and burning from a high fever.

But his faithful servant, who was the wisest man in all the world and sorrowful for it, knew that the only thing that could save the prince was love: and so on the very last evening of the prince's life, when all the castle was in mourning, and even the princess had locked herself away out of shame and misery, the servant went up to where the prince lay alone and kept vigil beside him all through that cold winter night. At the very moment that the sun began to rise and the prince began to die, the servant cut out his heart and held it to the prince's lips. As he drank his faithful servant's lifeblood, he began to grow healthy again, so that by the time the sun had risen, he was sitting up in bed, looking around him with colour in his cheeks and vigour in his eyes. Soon the princess came in, and was overjoyed to find that her husband was still alive, and that her curse had been broken at last. The entire castle was given over to celebrating and rejoicing. Only the prince was sad: he had lost his heart's dearest companion, and even though he built a statue in honour of his servant, he never smiled again all the rest of his days.

And that is the end of that. So you see – it is sad, but I think it is also rather lovely, and I know that you will love the poor princess, who really did nothing wrong. I have no patience to pity half the characters you do, I'm afraid, but that is hypocrisy, for I know that if you had been a drawing in a book I should have searched the world to find you, no matter the warnings.

This is where I close for fear of getting maudlin again. Keep warm and don't make any more toast. I am sorry that the only things I can send you are stories, but I hope they will be enough. I miss you so stupidly I can barely stand to think of you most days – is that awful? I would think of you all the time if only I were able to bear it.

Yours eternally,

Except when Adamo is sharing me,

Royston

P.S. The Three Impossible Tasks – see, I haven't forgotten! – are, quite naturally, One, balancing three cups of tea in one hand and a pile of romans in the other at eight o' clock in the morning when you're late for a study group, Two, making the perfect jam scones on the afternoon your mother-in-law is about to pop round for tea, and Three, not getting ridiculously lovelorn and sentimental when you're stuck halfway across the continent from your favourite person in the world. Our friend Stethos the Slightly Impetuous has his work cut out for him, I fear. I shall set myself to composing limericks and ballads of all kinds that shall be played at intervals by a group of travelling minstrels who follow him about and play dramatic music at all the wrong moments. Do you think Philomela is engaged to be married to the Evil Soup Pot? Or has she devoted her life to fencing and marmosets?

* * *

HAL I AM BEING SERIOUS!

I have wasted three WHOLE LETTERS on that bastard & he is saying NOTHING. TELL HIM TO GET HIS HANDS OFF YOUR BOYFRIEND'S UNMENTIONABLES & ONTO A DAMN PEN. the dragons are acting up & I need his opinion, I swear to any god you like I WILL fly down there & kick his ass myself if he keeps this up

oh also look I drew you a dragon overleaf because I'm thoughtful, a work of art, I know, I have many skills, an all-round genius, yes that is definitely me! give it to Toverre to cheer him up won't you? tell him he is a BIG BABY & I'll write him soon

FROM LAURE THE CONQUERER

* * *

O most esteemed veteran of the Farmyard Wars –

You know, of course, that I'm not naturally the bravest of men, but I can promise you that if Adamo doesn't stop talking about your nether regions, as he so unmanfully put it, I will steal a dragon and fly across the whole of the Ke-Han to challenge him to a duel at dawn for your virtue. You are mine and nobody else's, not even some big blustering war hero's, and you can tell him I said that. By the way, it's entirely your own fault that I have taken, completely against my will, to picturing you riding boldly on a conquered sheep into the thick of a battlefield populated with legions of devious piglets and waving your cutlass about to cut mosquitoes down out of the air whenever I think of you – entirely your own fault. You do look very dashing, don't worry.

And I must confess, in fact, that I think about you constantly. I always used to think that a foolish expression – surely it isn't possible, I would muse fondly to myself, to think of anybody all the time? Only now I see that it is. I cannot end a lesson or close a roman without longing to tell you of everything I've learnt, and to ask for your opinions. I yearn to discuss my findings with you before I write them down, partly because talking things through with you always clears my head so wonderfully and straightens out all my tangled thoughts, but also, and more pressingly, because I miss you so very much. Of course, if you were here, you would very probably laugh at me; for I have been working in the library almost all day, and I have just now caught sight of myself in the windowpane and must report that I am simply covered in ink. It has even gotten into my hair, though I couldn't tell you how.

Onto more cheerful things – Toverre arrived yesterday morning with a set of gloves to match the hat. He'd sewn them himself. They have little peacock feathers at the wrists – very little ones, but still. They fit so badly, Royston, so badly that I cannot possibly wear them, and yet it was such an awfully sweet gesture that I don't know what to do with myself. He is going a little stir-crazy now that both Laure and the other dragon-rider boy have left him, I suppose. He takes up all manner of ridiculous hobbies – sewing being the latest, of course – and then abandons them within the week. I don't know how he keeps it up with all the work he has to do for the 'Versity – I myself am getting completely swamped by it all.

I suppose that Philomela is cursed with an awful ability to speak to birds and animals in their own language (something about getting a bit too hungry after an awkward dragon-slaying incident years back, and a magic ring or two – she doesn't like to talk about it), and has started up a sort of halfway house for wayward squirrels and porcupines. Everyone thinks it's terribly sweet and kind-hearted of her, but she hates it. She much prefers the fencing, and tips her rapiers with poison boiled down out of her pet adders (who are all terrible gossips). She is going to have to marry the Evil Soup Pot's son (a spoiled young man who is much more interested in the stable-boy, in any case) and has plans to dress Stethos in her clothes come the wedding day, drug him into confusion, and then pass him off as the bride-to-be while she escapes? When she finds out about his quest to bring Pancake Castle low she'll join him, of course, because that's simpler.

And while we're on fairy tales – I did love the princess: very much, in fact. Thank you for that story – it was the loveliest present you could have given me. Don't you see, though, that I love her because she's Thremedon? And she isn't cursed, not in the littlest bit, just as Thremedon isn't cursed, just as we aren't cursed. You gave me your heart long ago, love, and I've kept it perfectly safe ever since, and that makes for a very happy ending. I know you still worry about me being alone in the city, that perhaps I was better off out in Nevers, but I do love Thremedon so – you know that I do – in fact, I think that I adore her almost as much as you do (and you have been in love with her all your life). I love tragedies because they're never complete – the best ones always have the littlest scrap of loveliness to make the cruelty seem all the harsher, and it's that sweetness that I hold to. You are a terrible cynic sometimes.

I don't know if any of that makes sense – it is rather late, I'm afraid (sorry!) – but I know that you read as much into stories as I do. In fact, I depend upon you for that. Who else will listen to a fairy tale and see not a book but a boathouse, not a girl but a city, not a prince but a silly man in a library with ink all over his fingers? For a very long time, I thought that I was the only person who thought such things, but then of course you came along and explained that no, I had been right all along. That is, of course, why you have to come home as quickly as possible, to read stories with me again, whether they are about made-up pancake heroes with sugar-cane swords or about lonely selfless men who cut out their hearts for love, whether they are gorgeously written in your hand or full of badly-tailored sentences that get lost inside brackets and splattered with ink. I am a child, still, in many ways: but you'll forgive me that, I know.

The library is closing up now, and my little stub of candle is almost burned down, so I shall close here. It will be quiet at home, and cold, but I will think of you, and then it will be warmer. You would be the loveliest reader, if I really were a character in a book: I would love your hands and your cleverness, and the way you always memorised the page number before you closed me: but most of all I would love how you loved me.

Lost in daydreams as usual,

Your silly

Hal

* * *

Laure –

Have torn self away from Roy long enough to write you, as you can see. Clearly you've missed me if you've been spending so much time worrying who I'm carrying on with. Jealousy is strictly for milksops and civilians only, you know. As to your question, loss of control at higher altitudes isn't something I've dealt with before. As long as they're still flying straight most of the time it should be alright, and I trust you to be able to get the men to compensate. I've a friend you could get in contact with, might be able to refer you to someone who knows more than me. He's off on sabbatical Bastion knows where, but the standing address his post gets sent to is overleaf. Might take some time to get a reply out of him, but he's had experience with dragons and knows a good sight more about dragonmaking than me. Either way, it's looking more and more like this whole expedition was a wild goose chase of the stupidest kind – I'll be back with you and the dragons before winter, most like, and you can yell at me all you like then. Give Inglory a kick in the behind from me: she'd better have learned some manners by now.

Chin up, kid.

Owen

* * *

To the best and bravest of men –

Need I remind you that not only have you saved a city by singlehandedly storming the Basquiat, you have also managed to put up with me at my most frightful for a good three years? You are a conquering hero and sainted beyond my power to say. I am quite convinced that if you wanted to, you could reduce Adamo to a cowering wreck in a corner. I told him, quite sternly, of your reproaches, which for some reason made him laugh long and hard; I then hastened to remind him that if it came down to it, my money would be on you every time; upon hearing which, he rolled his eyes and made a very disrespectful noise in the back of his throat, but was eventually forced to admit, "I probably wouldn't fault you for that." Even from halfway across the continent, my dearest, you have forced Chief Sergeant Adamo, he of the obnoxiously loud voice and disgustingly old-fashioned boots, to concede your superiority. I think there should be a medal made especially in your honour.

On a similar note – if I die a war hero, my darling, please, on your honour, don't let the songs about me involve sheep. That is not dashing at all, and you should be ashamed for even suggesting it. Naturally I should be carried about by clouds of mosquitoes who had declared me their king. Get it right! I suppose that that makes me very much like our dear Philomela, with her power over beasts. Where do you find the names for this little escapade of yours, exactly? If it's from the back of the old red dictionary then I should warn you, those haven't been popular in Thremedon for at least fifty years. What do you suppose is the Evil Soup Pot's real name is? Knowing you you'll choose Fringillo or Sphygmos or some other awful word out of an Old Ramanthe vocabulary. Very likely he is actually the long-lost elder brother of our good Stethos, who in a fit of pique threw his infant brother over the balcony one day, only to watch the infant fall into a hay wagon and trundle away quite peacefully. He is the heir to the kingdom after all, then – what a shocking twist, don't you think?

This Toverre child wouldn't be at all interested in you, would he? I begin to feel the faintest stirrings of jealousy. I must compliment him on his excellent taste, however – I would have put you in peacock feathers long ago if I thought I could have convinced you to wear them. Nothing garish, you understand – just subtly, as understated little lowlights at cuffs and collars, the better to complement your eyes. We can't help but want to dress you up, Hal – men of taste will pay thousands of chevronets for just the right frame to match the perfect painting, and whatever other flaws I admit to, you must acknowledge that I have very good taste when it comes to you.

Besides which – oh, Hal, I can't keep writing endless fripperies like this, not after your last letter. I can't tell you what it did to me. I shan't write you anymore fairy tales. I can't bear to, not when you're so far away. I have to write nonsense to you – please, please, keep writing nonsense back to me – don't be beautiful and eloquent and so guilelessly charming at me when I can't even kiss you to keep you quiet, when I can't put my fingers to your lips to stopper up all your beautiful words when they begin to hurt too much. I think of you sitting in the library, busy at work, smiling every so often at a pretty turn of phrase or pushing your hair back out of your face, adding to your freckles with ink, and would give anything to be able to come up behind you and put my arms around you, pinch out the candle and take you to bed. I would cut out my heart if it would save your life – you know that I would – but I would hate to know that that would bring you pain. Do you see how silly I am, and I how maudlin I get when I'm away from you? My words have gone all to pieces tonight, and I hate to tell you how much I think of you. You're right, you know – sometimes I still cannot stand myself for stealing you away from Nevers.

This is a horrible letter, but I have no spare paper with which to start over, and I am vain enough to think that you will read any word from me, even if it is wretched and full of self-pity. I have no beautiful stories for you tonight, my darling, although I'll collect as many as I can for you before next I write, I promise. Carry this with you, at least: I am an old and unkind fool and not much more, but I am devoted to you above all else. I hope you know that, at least.

Ever yours,

Royston

* * *

Beloved –

I wish I knew how to convince you that you are my best and only destiny. I will remind you, every day of my life, if I have to, that had it not been for you, I would be tutoring three very dear children in a little grey room with hardly any books to work from and no idea of what the Basquiat even looked like. I should never have seen the Amazement, or the 'Versity, or half a million beautiful things. I know you think that Thremedon is too worldly for me, that life is more full of trickery and intrigue here, that I am surrounded by shallow and unkind people, but you must know that it has never been like that at all. I suppose you think that it is better suited for someone like yourself, and that at the same time, you imagine yourself to be shallow and unkind – yes, I know that you are afraid of that sometimes, although I can't think why. I am endlessly happy here – I don't think I say that enough – and you are the greatest man I know. I try in all things to be like you – to speak like you, to think like you, even to write like you, because you write and think and speak so very beautifully – I try in all things to be worthy of you. You are the centrefold of my life: all else is bound to you.

Frivolities, if you want them – oh, I could tell you about Toverre's latest attempt to win me over, if you like. I begin to fear that you are right, you know - while last I checked he was rather gone over the other dragon-rider boy (you remember, the terribly sweet one who called his dragon Violet or Daisy or something utterly lovely like that? and oh, dear, here I go with the horrendous parentheses again – let me just close these up quickly before things get really ugly and we start to find the slaughtered limbs of punctuation marks scattered all about), but he's been insisting on lunch with me at least every week, and even put me through his poetry the other day (he writes poetry, now, you see – last month, he swore that he was taking up the harp, and the month before that it was needlepoint). Now that I have faced down Adamo in a daring epistolary showdown, I suppose you'll have to take on Toverre next, which encounter may actually prove the more dangerous of the two. He very nearly stabbed a girl with the very shoes they were fighting over the other day. He wields quills and ink pots like a warrior out of a Ke-Han epic.

And I could tell you all about how I choose my favourite names – yes, from the old red dictionary – and that I've taken to finding new words to tinker about with when I'm bored, taking them apart and hunting down their provenances the way I imagine engineers must do with bits of machinery – 'cryptaesthesia' being my new favourite, but with 'sabaism' coming in at a close second. When I was young I used to have a notebook I kept all my favourite strange words in, lists and lists of them, but I left it behind at Nevers. I don't need it now – I remember all of them – I remember the word 'ethereal' fascinated me for days and days when I was little. I've never told you that, I don't think. I still have so many things to tell you, you know: I haven't nearly finished talking to you yet, and don't think I ever will have.

And I could tell you more about Philomela and her evil twin sister Procne, who of course turns out to be our old friend the mysterious fortune-teller in disguise, and who is madly in love with a man who was tragically transfigured into a phoenix by the Evil Soup Pot (whose real name is Bill, thank you very much) in revenge for his killing the only woman he ever loved, the mother of his spoilt son, a beautiful and blameless woman named Ermintrude –

But most of all I will tell you about how I sit at home in the chair by the fireplace and read the adventures of Tyche the Brave over again and think of you in complete contentment, because although I miss you dreadfully, it is enough, for now, for me, to know that you will come home to me soon enough, and pinch out the candle and take me in your arms again.

Yours for always,

Hal

* * *

Daring Mosquito-Slayer –

Conqueror of the Piglets –

& Most Valiant of Sheep-Riders –

I'm afraid my last letter must have gone off course, or else the post is just being even slower than usual – or perhaps I've not yet received your reply. It's only been five weeks, so I know not to be worried just yet, but all the same, I can't help it. I am enormously silly over you, as you know, and have had to stop myself from sending you absolute showers of letters. Most likely you'll end up getting a whole slew of mine all at once and be crushed half to death under the weight of them, or else be laid low by a paper cut. Our story will end up being told as a tragic moral tale that warns against overindulgence in affection, and young ladies everywhere will learn a solemn warning from the Ballad of Foolish Hal, who wrote his lover to death.

You see how completely silly I get without you. I have not been able to concentrate on my dissertation at all this past month – I got several pages done, but they were absolutely awful. I'm quite glad you weren't around to correct them – you should have wept yourself to sleep in despair over my spelling. It's not going any quicker, and I am still in the library much later than I know you'd like. I did finally find a copy of the _Compendium of Poets of the Old Ramanthe_ – the third edition, the one we were looking for? It cost a little bit more than I'd have liked, but you'll be so happy with it – it's beautiful, wonderful condition, and gorgeously bound in red leather. I can barely keep my hands off it, and sat translating for ages the other day when I should have been doing indexing. I was going to keep it a surprise, but it's so lovely I just had to tell you about it. I did find something else for your birthday, but _that_'sa secret I will keep no matter what it costs me. I have no hopes that you'll be home in time for it, but that doesn't matter – your present will be waiting for when you get back.

This is going to have to be a quick little thing in between classes, I'm afraid – I'm running off to teach two tutorials in a row after lunch. I spent most of yesterday's seminars wondering how one would design a saddle for a sheep. Entirely your fault. Always your fault.

Caught up in ridiculous imaginings,

Always and entirely because of you,

Hal

* * *

Dear Laure

Thank you for your last letter. I passed the drawing on to Toverre, who has said to tell you that he has it pinned up in his room and that it is very lovely. He misses you rather a lot, I think, so I have been making sure to keep him company when I can. He is getting on very well at the 'Versity – you would be proud of how hard he's working!

I hope that you have heard from Adamo by now, and that your trouble with the dragons is resolved? I suppose that if you do write him back, you wouldn't mind asking him how the campaign is going? The post is so uncertain that I fear half my letters to Royston don't go through, and I haven't heard from him in ages. Do please also tell Balfour that I shall write him just as soon as I have time – we miss him here in Thremedon.

Hoping you are well,

Hal

* * *

OWEN ADAMO YOU UNBEARABLE TOSSER

don't give me that chin up kid bullshit I'm not a baby. wrote your friend Thom, had no word yet, either way things seem to be stabilising. there's a lot we don't know, even more than we thought, but we're figuring it out as we go NO THANKS TO YOU GALLIVANTING OFF TO THE MIDDLE OF NOWHERE MISTER WAR HERO, get your ass the hell back to Volstov you utter bastard

tried a long flight with Gaeth the other day, got right over the mountains with no trouble. Inglory's shaping up nicely by the way, still a foulmouthed & unpredictable little bugger, picking fights with anything that moves & nearly took Cornflower's eye off the other day, then half an hour later was curled up with her neat as a pile of kittens. law unto themselves, honestly. Steelhands looks down her nose at the littles mostly but mother-cats them when she has the time, by which I mean fetches them a good clout on the head or switches at them with her tail when she thinks they're misbehaving. Balfour in much the same position with all of us idiots to be honest. HE MISSES YOU YOU KNOW. you really are terrible, leaving your poor wife fretting alone & clutching at his pearls while you're off carrying on with that dreadful floozy Royston. YOU ARE A BAD BAD MAN.

also you had BETTER WRITE ME BACK THIS TIME I don't care what fucking shenanigans you've gotten yourselves into, your boyfriend's precious wilting flower of a rentboy is worrying himself sick back at home I'll have you know

THIS IS FROM LAURE IN CASE YOU'VE FORGOTTEN

* * *

Balfour –

Enclosing this with the official missives, hope it doesn't get lost.

First – I'll be seeing you and the kids within the week, I hope, and Bastion knows we'll need all of you in the best possible shape, treaty be damned, so keep a tight hold on them, Laure especially – she's like to go off the rails just when we need her most. I'll din it into her head when she gets here, but it can't hurt to have her hear it from you, too. She's not to be a hero. She's to be a soldier. Make sure she understands that.

Second – Roy's been missing ten days now, since the last raid. I need you to get word to his boy, let him know what's up, but tell him not to worry. He's not to trust anything he hears except from one of us – official reports aren't always reliable, as our Raphael showed the world.

Best of luck,

Adamo

* * *

My dear Hal

I know you'll have heard by now that there's been an upset in the Ke-Han – it'll be all over Thremedon by tomorrow, I fear. Long story short, this is what I know – the rebels made a series of raids against our troops and eventually overpowered several legions. Our numbers look to be holding strong, never fear, but the dragons are being sent down as reinforcements. The Ke-Han weren't best pleased to learn about them, but they were the ones who asked for our help with the insurgents, after all, so they're in no position to be angry with us when we've done them a favour. Besides, as Antoinette put it, it's better to get our troops out first and worry about treaties afterwards, rather than refuse to send the dragons in and desert the troops simply for fear of upsetting a few diplomats. We leave at daybreak. I'll keep you posted whenever I can, I promise, although that may not be too often.

I'm afraid I have to tell you now that the real reason I'm sending you this is that Margrave Royston's been listed as missing. You're not to worry about it. The Ke-Han have been taking prisoners to hold hostage, it seems, so he's most likely being treated like a king as we speak. Besides which, he's an old hand at this kind of thing – he has one of the strongest Talents I've ever heard of, and is sure to be alright. Adamo has said that you're not to trust any information unless it comes from us – don't believe the official reports, you hear? We'll be doing everything we can to find him, and you know that when a dragonrider makes a promise, he keeps it.

I know it's awful for you to be all by yourself in this, but do please take care of yourself and don't fret. Royston's gotten out of worse scrapes before, the way Adamo tells it!

Your friend,

Balfour

* * *

HELLO HAL

Balfour's got me scribbling crap down for him, says I'm to write you, we're all fine & dandy, not to worry about any of us, haven't found your man yet but we're working on it. bunch of skirmishes, been clobbering Ke-Han heads a lot, tired but unhurt. mostly this is just to say we're all still kicking about happy as a box of crabs & busy being brave dashing heroes and YOU SHOULD BE BRAVE TOO. you know we all think you're splendid really & we promise we'll get him home to you.

LOVE FROM US ALL!

* * *

Hal –

Most likely you won't receive this until we're all back safe and sound in Thremedon, and then we can all have a good laugh about it together. We're heading off into deep Ke-Han territory tomorrow, and like as not we won't be able to get any more letters through for a long while. It's not that I'm expecting things to go pear-shaped, you understand – reports are looking very good, and honestly it seems like we've got them on the run – they weren't expecting more dragons, and that scared the shit out of them, so we've been holding our own quite nicely – but I learned long ago not to run off into unknown territory without setting your affairs in order first, which is why I'm telling you that Roy keeps the spare key to the safe in my rooms under a pot plant on his desk. He's probably told you that before, but I'm putting you in charge of it officially. You're to fish my will out of the safe if it comes to that.

I know it's a lot to put on you, and that it certainly won't cheer you up much, but you're a stronger man than most give you credit for. I've trusted you to take care of Roy, which is more than I can say for anyone else I've ever known, and I'll trust you with my effects now. And speaking of that bastard – in exchange for putting this on you, I'm making you the formal promise, right now, that I'll find him and bring him home to you. He's been a brother to me for nigh on two decades, and I'd sooner rot in hell for the rest of my days than leave him out here in the Ke-Han wilderness. I will get him home – I swear it to you – so don't you go wasting your time worrying, or he'll have my head for upsetting you.

I've enclosed a note for Laure that I'd like you to pass on if she happens to come back without me. Like I said, when we're all back getting drunk in the tower with Roy whining about us stealing all his best wine we'll have a grand old time laughing our asses off over it, but until then, keep it safe for me.

Yours faithfully,

Adamo

* * *

Laure –

Obviously if Hal's given you this then it means I'm not around anymore, so put down the ale and quit cheering 'cause the old man's dead, unless you're singing some godawful song about me, in which case carry on. I always thought I could do better than Steelballs. Make sure it's a good one.

Here's the thing: me being dead and all, it means there'll be a shit-ton of backpay sitting around doing nothing. I never had kids and I never had a wife, though Bastion knows you and Balfour together nagged me enough to serve just as well, so tag, you're it. There's a couple personal effects that are to go to Roy and Balfour, and I've left Luvander, Raphael, and Ghislain a little something each, not to mention that bastard Rook if anybody can ever track him down, but you're my chief heir. Apparently I have family estates (the hell would've guessed?) and those are yours now. I'd have gotten around to marrying you eventually, I figure, so things would've ended up like this regardless.

I'll tell you this much: you're the best pilot I ever trained, maybe even better than Rook, though so help me, if you tell him I said that I will haunt you and it won't be pretty. I guess all I can really say is – fly true, keep tight hold on your girl, and maybe think of me a bit whenever you can be arsed to.

Yours always,

Owen

* * *

Hal –

I will never send this letter. I will never so much as write it. I pen it only in my head, alone and awake in agony, hardly daring to think of you lest the foulness of this place taint even my memories of you, yet clinging to your image as a drowning man claws at the sunlight on the surface of the water. Look at me, being poetic even now. You always said it was my words you loved the most. I knew it, and I delighted in it. I thought – I hoped – that even if all else failed, if one day we woke to find that I was no longer rich or Talented, if what little in the way of good looks I ever had had vanished with age, if I had fallen out of favour with gods and men alike – even if I lost everything except for my wit, I should still be able to keep you by my side. Words are all I have now, and soon I shall lose even those. If they take my tongue, will you still love me? If they take my eyes, will I remember your face? If they take my hands and my feet and my heart and my bones, will anything be left of me to love you? I wish you'd come in and tell me to stop thinking like this. I wish you'd draw the curtains and kiss me awake and confiscate the quilt until I've gotten up. I can't stand the melancholy when you aren't near me to ease it.

Do you remember the day I came home after we won the war the first time? Well, it was night, I suppose, but so late it might almost have been morning. You had crept into my bed and curled up there, not expecting my return, not desiring anything other than the comfort – you said, sleep-tousled and unendurably lovely – afforded you by the closeness of my scent, the security of my lingering presence. I kissed you then as I had longed to, as I long to now. I tumbled you back across the bed, exhausted as we both were, and took you in my arms and took you for myself, and afterwards held you close as the sun rose. I tried, dry-eyed with tiredness yet unable to sleep, to understand just what it was that made you so precious to me, and made of you as you drowsed the most detailed study I have ever attempted. Your hair was softness itself, rumpled and sweat-darkened and limned ever so subtly with gold by the morning light, and the lines of your face unutterably sweet, the edge of your wrist where it lay next to mine so sharp and so brittle.

We argued later that afternoon, about something – oh, I can't remember – you didn't speak to me for a full two hours, and I remember I was glad, savagely so, to think that not even this was perfect. I am terrified of your perfection: even now, I fear to ruin you, with every unkind word, with every awful fear. You are the very best thing I have ever called my own, and I can barely stand to know that sometimes. I went to you before the sunset, I remember, all in a rush, suddenly more frightened of being without you than of hurting you. I remember I tried to make you understand how selfish I can be. You only laughed. You are a great deal wiser than I am, and also far more foolish.

I begin to feel that I did invent you after all, that I brought you to life out of a book I loved yearningly in my childhood, then forgot as I grew older. The more I think that, the more I know it must be true. You have always seemed unreal to me, always seemed too lovely, too dear. Surely I would never have given anything real so much love? I should have thought myself sensible enough to entrust my heart to fiction and fiction alone. I remember now: it was a book I kept near me at all times, a book of love and adventure and bravery and loss, a book of secrets and magic and dragons. You were the main character, of course: the dreamy-eyed country boy who loved fairy tales, the brave and undaunted young man who saved a city, the promised lover who reminded me of my own innocence. I would have loved you as passionately even if you had been paper, Hal. I would have married you even if you had only been a song.

It is dark now. It has been dark for weeks, I think, for years. I cannot keep count of the time I've spent here, and am grateful for that. I don't want to know how long you've been without me. I am so sorry, Hal, but soon I'm going to have to stop thinking of you. I can't think of you, not here. Nothing of you should ever be here. You'll stay where you should be, in the bright city I love more dearly than almost anything else in the world save for you, I think. I'm going to close my eyes for a moment now, to rest as long as I can before they come back. I don't know how long I'll still have words. I've no need to say it here, so I won't. There are noises outside the door I can't understand. I'm going to close my eyes and keep them closed. There is shouting everywhere.

There is this, I suppose: somewhere beyond the mountains, at the back of the sky, there remains that country boy made a hero, and this awful dark and bitter stench can never touch him. It's for the best that I made him up, I suppose. None of this will ever touch the pages of the books he reads, or if it does, he has only to close the book and be rid of horror for always. There is that. There will always be that –

* * *

Hal –

We've found Roy, safe and sound minus a couple fingers. Quelled the rebellion while we were at it, thank you very much. All of us are heroing our way back home to Thremedon as fast as we can. Shan't take too long till we're back in the city.

All's well that ends well, I think!

Adamo

P.S. Roy's put a note in for you.

* * *

H – I am safe and on my way back to you. Two weeks. Wait for me. I love you endlessly – R.

* * *

Matched to every Book, just as shadow is matched to shape, is its own true and perfect Reader. No book is not written with this reader in mind, of course – certainly it is unlikely that the author will ever meet him: I think that most often, the reader is only a voice in the back of the mind, an image behind the eyes, perhaps a composite of critic and lover and teacher and mentor, the very best of every good and wise and worthy thing. Sometimes, however, that reader is a very real person, whole and awful and lonely and lovely: and he, on finding that one book, will fall so wholly in love with it that it is made real, all its ink lifted up into light and wonder, all its stories made true.

Once upon a time, there was a boy who sat in the corner of a library and built palaces out of ink. He sewed madcap heroes together as though crafting old quilts, borrowing names from this dictionary and Talents from that biography, melting down three or four famous swords and forging a new one from the run-off, cobbling together pairs of magic boots and holy crowns from scraps of stories he found tucked away into old books that had not been read for years without count. He wrote letters and poems and numberless draughts of dissertations, helpful comments on students' tests, memos to his professors, notes to his friends, vocabularies for strange and beautiful old languages, glosses for newly reconstructed paragraphs still too piecemeal to be readily translated, definitions for old terms he barely understood, until he felt that even his blood was ink: until he felt that he was as useless as one of his own stories, folded up between wood and leather and left to speckle in the sun, glanced at once or twice over the years, but ultimately unexceptional in every way.

I suppose that all my life it fell always to me to be the one who waited, quiet and dreaming in a corner with a book in my lap, for adventure to come and find me: and if it never had, I suppose I would have been content that way, would have grown eventually into a mild and doddering old man who had never strayed beyond the hills of his homeland and harboured no bitterness despite that. I can be very boring when I want to be, I know: I am too complacent, I think, but I cannot be any other way. Dreams were always lovelier than truth to me, in the same way that a book is always lovelier before it ends, that heroes are always bolder and more daring before their tales come to a sclose and they have to give up their habits of bravado, settle down and have children: I could never the thought of seeing any of my daydreams realised, was horrified of holding them heavy and breakable in my hands.

And yet there was a man who found me, entirely by accident, on a day like any other. I like to think I brought him some comfort for a time, which is, of course, the truest purpose of any story. He was the reader I had been written for. He picked me up where all others had passed me by, and somehow what I brought him gave him happiness. It's not fair to depend so wholly on one person, just to be able to be made real: it's not fair that I should have to spend so long being useless and uninteresting without him. It is frightening to be closed, to be put away into the corner again, when once you've been read – it is frightening to be forgotten, and unmade from something loved and wonderful into bits of paper, from a true story shining golden in someone's mind into lines of dull ink.

I would have been useful, I think: I would have been good: but I would never have been beautiful, and I would certainly never have been real, if he had not found me.

He is home now: he is sleeping in the bed behind me, and still I write. He was too exhausted to do much more than collapse into the sheets as soon as we got him up the stairs, for which I am thankful: he needs rest. I have been sitting at his side for the past three hours, restless and angry and afraid and so relieved, needing to walk about, needing to run and scream, but unable to leave him. The line of his left hand is changed and so strange without its last two fingers, all crumpled up like the foot of a little bird: I want to touch it, but am afraid that it will upset him. It is still bandaged. I cannot bear to think of how it must have happened. I will love that hand especially, I think, to make up for it.

It is nearly sunset already: I shall have to light the lamps soon. I have already lit the candle-stub, the same candle-stub I have been using since he went away, and balanced it on the edge of the desk where I am writing. I want him to come up behind me and put his arms around me. I want him to kiss my neck and drop his face to my hair and breathe in. I want him to reach forward and pinch out the candle flame and pull me back to bed. I want this so much that my hands are shaking.

He looked so tired as he came up the road in the morning light, with Adamo and Balfour walking on either side, just in case – they both seemed afraid that he would fall over at any moment, which I thought was a bit silly. Royston would never do anything so foolish as fall over, not when he had better things to do, not when he still had to explain to me just where he had been for so long. I was suddenly incredibly angry with him – he had had no right to scold me for not taking care of myself, not when he looked like that – but then I saw that he had trimmed his beard neatly as ever, but that there was a little bit of sticking plaster at his throat where the razor had slipped. I think I fell in love with him all over again when I saw that. I couldn't help it.

I half stumbled down to take his arm as he reached the steps. I had been going to say something clever – I had my mouth open and everything – only suddenly I _couldn't_. I just got hold of his arm and pulled him up and said, 'Well, _really_ –' and then I had sort of crumpled. He already had his other arm round me, quite roughly, and I put my face into his neck and clung to him and sobbed horribly.

He said, quite wryly, 'Was it as bad as all that?'

I said, 'Worse.'

The next moment I felt his knees go all wobbly, which was awful, and so I stopped crying immediately and began to bully him up the stairs as best I could. I think Adamo was proud of me for that, strangely: Balfour, of course, only looked a little teary. It took all three of us to get him upstairs in the end, but we managed it. He wouldn't let go of me for the longest time, and I didn't want to let go of him: I couldn't stop looking at him.

I confessed, a little nonsensically, 'I feel like I'm on the last page of the book,' and he gave me a look I can barely stand to remember, as though he'd cut out his heart after all.

He said, 'I feel that, too – I feel cold, I feel – on the edge of things. A bit like – a bit empty, really.'

'Don't close it,' I begged, 'don't – don't close the book. What am I saying? Oh, Royston, I'm – I'm babbling like an idiot, I know, and I'm sorry – it's just that, well, I'm just – I'm just so terribly pleased to see you.'

He put his head against mine and he laughed and laughed, until Balfour started to look genuinely frightened. He said, 'That makes us both idiots, then, because I understand you perfectly.'

He is stirring in the bed now: I can hear him. He is sitting up. I am still shaking. In a moment he will come up behind me and put his arms around my neck. In another moment the sun will go down, and he will pinch out the candle-flame and draw me back to bed. He will kiss my lips and my throat and my eyelids: he will put his hands over my heart. He will read me in perfect silence: he will read me even in the dark.

* * *

**ahahahahahaha it is 3 AM and I am going to regret this horrifically tomorrow morning**

**somebody send help**


End file.
